ForewordThis will be my second time GM'ing the poisoning skill in the last 2 weeks, this information is up to date as of 20May2009. The first time around I utilized DP fairly early, and I also purchased every single keg of poison. This time around I am training alchemy alongside poisoning, and I will give you the information you need to GM this skill as efficiently as possible within a reasonable amount of time. I am training this skill from 0, and I will detail the cost from 0-gm, 30-gm, and 50-gm for your convienence. The reason I am doing this is that my second poisoner is a Red-Tinkerer, and I will not be able to train her to 30. Furthermore, all skill numbers are represented in "Shown" skill. Your "Show-real" skill is virtually usless to pay attention to.

Where to get the resourcesHave a character enter into the NPC mages guild and purchase your regs directly from the NPC. Buying regs without being a member, or purchasing them from a player is extremely expensive, considering how easy it is to gather large quantities. Say "<Name> Join" to an NPC mage guildmaster and drop the required gold on them to join and enjoy the benefit of discount rates (this was 500gp at the time of writting).

When you purchase regs from an npc vendor, they will restock in 30 minutes. The restock will be double the quantity of the initial purchase. You can keep doing this until they are restocking 999 at a time, that is the goal here. (You can do this with non-reg vendors to gather things such as hides/boards, but they restock every hour instead of 30 minutes). Find an NPC vendor away from the busy towns (do not use Moonglow), and set your clock for 30 minute intervals. I say not to use the main towns because...a.) It is insanely annoying for those trying to buy regs for daily use

b.) If someone beats you to the vendor after he restocks, you just wasted an hour of your time.

You have the resources, now what.Once you have gathered some resources (I started when I had collected 40,000 nightshade), grab 20 bottles and a single bladed weapon (or a single piece of food, it does NOT matter) and find a cozy spot where you will not be disturbed. Do not macro anywhere but the center tile of a small house, always keep a 2 tile distance between you and the wall or else you are susceptible to being killed. There is a chance you may die via an earthquake attack, but only if you poison yourself to death, the listed macro will cover that scenario.

Setting upTo effectively macro this in the quickest amount of time, you are going to need about 20 bottles, a pouch of as many mortars as you can fit (gm mortars are better), a locked down box (Or bank) full of nightshade, a single bladed weapon (or food item) and another pouch of cure potions(Also as many as you can carry). Always use cure potions equal to the level of poison you are working with. (Lesser poison = Lesser Cure, Poison = Cure, and so on)

Why so many mortars you ask?? Simple, each d.click (by type) randomly selects one, and you will select a new one every 500ms give or take. So by having several mortars you decrease the chance that the macro will select a mortar already in use (although this does not waste resources, it does waste time). Furthermore, it allows restocking the mortars (which is needed rarely, I have used the same bag of gm mortars for 20+ hours) to be a drop in the bag, instead of selecting multiple absolute targets to achieve the same effect. Alchemy is one of the few (if not only) skills where you can continue working with a seperate tool and avoid any delay in skill use.

Important!Check this macro every few hours and make sure you have enough Cure Potions! You COULD add a section to craft the cures in with your alchemy macro if you want, but I rarely used a cure potion myself with a second-account healer making sure I never witnessed statloss.

Make sure your bag of cures (and mortars) is/are open and visible. Before you start your macro, re-log completely out and back into UO. Why? Because if you have seen another mortar or cure potion besides the ones you hope to use, razor may get confused and try to use those with the Target-by-Type method. This will cause your macro to hang up, or possibly cause you to poison yourself to death or waste time trying to use a mortar you cannot reach. If you are macroing in public, be advised that people can sit cure potions and mortars just outside your reach to screw up your macro. This can also happen if you are macroing inside your house, and there is a mortar/cure outside your home, so beware.

The MacroYou want to run 2 different macros, looping them together by hotkeys. The first should look like this...

This macro will start using random mortars to make poisons if your total number of potions (as dictated by the counter) is less than 15. Once the counter reaches 15, it will likely continue to make 3-8 additional potions, giving you 20. Once it has reached this number it will start the poisoning macro, and if your hitpoints decrease while this macro is running, it will attempt to cure twice (just incase) and then go on a long Pause. This is a worst-case scenario, you are welcome to delete the 999 waits and add a section to heal yourself or drink a heal pot instead. I would rather make sure I am not poisoned, and wait out any attacker. I also have a second character macroing healing on me, just in case, because I am a stat-loss murderer.

This macro will repeatedly try to cure yourself with a potion and then use poisoning on the food/weapon. The 1 second timeout on the target after poisoning skill allows it to constantly loop Orange-Potions until you can use the poisoning skill again. Like the above macro, when you use all of your poison potions, it will switch to the alchemy macro to make more, and then repeat into an endless loop. If you are low on health, it will attempt to cure you with potions and then go on a long pause. Again, you are welcome to chance the 999 waits to a healing script ot yellow-potions, but I cannot risk dying.

The reason this macro is better than "Make potion, use potion on blade, repeat"Contrary to the other guides, the delay on poisoning is LESS than that of alchemy. Also, you can create 20 potions with alchemy in a matter of seconds, as long as you keep using a different mortar. So it is more efficient, time-wise. To spend about 12 seconds making 20+ potions and then using poisoning until the potions are depleted. As you start using the poisoning skill, you will still be making potions with alchemy as the delay begins to be achieved. You should be poisoning constantly, with potions still appearing in your backpack, and every once in a while taking a short 5 second break for the alchemy loop to reload. This is fast, period.

This macro is written in psuedo-code, and displays the correct idea for the macro, I am not going to copy my macro and paste it here, nor do I offer support. Please do NOT PM me regarding skill-gain/macro issues, instead, make a post here and I will respond given the chance.

What to make, and when to make itFrom 0 to 51 poisoning, use lesser poison.From 51 to 68.0 poisoning, use regular poison.From exactly 68.0 start using Greater poisoning (you can gm like this..)

I estimate that I will use DP for the last 1.5 points or so, but I will update this with the exact numbers...

68 Seems to be the magic number to stop gaining with regular poison. (Edit: You CAN gain to 70 shown with regular poison, and that is where technical limitations stop gains, but it is slow, I would start Greaters at 68) I tried to move on to Greater Poison, but was failing making them too much. I made 1 whole keg of Greater Strength (about 2500 mandrake) and bumped my alchemy up to 60+, then started the alchemy-poison macro with greater poison. Works great, and after running the numbers, it seems entirely cost-effective to make regular poison until 68 shown. Because they only take 2 nightshade, instead of the GP's 4 nightshade. The gains were not double using GP, so the regular poison was more effective.

For day 3.5 I accidentally forgot to change the poison type to Greater, and continued using regular (oops). I wasted nightshade, but I learned that you will gain to EXACTLY 70.0 poisoning using regular poison, though I would suggest you start GP at 68.Day 3.5.Macro Ran for: 3 hoursUsed Nightshade: 3251Start/End Alchemy: 60.5/64.4Start/End Poisoning: 68/70Total NS used: 13958

Here is where I really break into using Greater Poison, and the increase in resources used are really noticable. But not bad for 20 (plus or minus) hours in total so far. Right now I am thinking that it will take 50 hours of constant macro to GM, but we shall see.Day 4.Macro Ran for: 3 hoursUsed Nightshade: 6129Start/End Alchemy: 64.4/70.6Start/End Poisoning: 70/72.5Total NS used: 20087

Here is where it became apparent that Poisoning is much slower than Alchemy. I imagine this divide will widen as I increase in skill. But overall, skillgain is not too bad. Poisoning seems to be gaining about the same rate (over time) as a skill such as Stealth. Fairly quick to the 70's and then becoming boringly slow yet consistant.Day 4.5.Macro Ran for: 4 hoursUsed Nightshade: 8974Start/End Alchemy: 70.6/81.2Start/End Poisoning: 72.5/78.6Total NS used: 29061

Running Total: 168,115 gp, around 5k of which was startup cost spent on mortars/bottles ect..Current thoughts : Alchemy is now picking up over poisoning, and I think I will gm it with around 93 poisoning.

A final analysis, and cost chart at varied intervals will be posted upon completion.

Like Safir already said, this is perfect for anyone wanting to GM these skills (like myself). I've noticed other threads where people have been talking about the cost to GM poison, and it seems to be much debated. Very exciting, I'll be watching to see the results!

This is some excellent information, but I keep coming across one problem - Razor seems to always want to choose the mortar and pestle I'm already working with (about 4 out of 5 times), even though I've got like 50 of them. What's up with that?

Edit: The macro is working fine, I just think it's uncanny how often this happens.

not sure what is happening, but the alchemy part works fine, however when it goes to the poisoning it says i don't have the resources. i have th potions and the blade (katana) could there be something wrong with the timeout portion?

2, do you need to restock bottles, it seems i started with 20 and now i only have 16. do bottles get destroyed?

not sure what is happening, but the alchemy part works fine, however when it goes to the poisoning it says i don't have the resources. i have th potions and the blade (katana) could there be something wrong with the timeout portion?

2, do you need to restock bottles, it seems i started with 20 and now i only have 16. do bottles get destroyed?

-Goose

Bottles do not get destroyed. Poisoning shouldnt give you the "not enough resources" error. It's probably just happening when some of the mortars finish grinding and your in the poisoning section.

Ok, here they are. I have a second char with GM healing healing the char right now incase he get poisoned, however i havent had to use it yet because i can't get this macro running. So i have taken out some of the long pauses and cure potion drinking because of this.

When i mentioned i couldn't get it to work earlier because of resources, after watching the macro a few times over, it was like the alchemy macro dominated and took over everything. kept trying to play the alcehmy macro. The alchemy macro swtched to the poisoning macro, and once switched, it wouldn't start poisoning, just kept trying to play the alchemy macro again. Also when the alchemy macro was playing, everytime it looped it tried to place the poison macro too.

Pouch with mortars are in my backpack. Bottles are in my backpack (20) and nightshade is in locked down box in my house. not sure if one of these are causing a problem

Here they are. Hope you can read, i can only open the macro script on notepad

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 22 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum